“I don’t have 2020 vision” may have sparked more than a few memes and laughs in the past years. But the reality is marketers across industries are faced with this daunting question every time they’re forecasting their marketing and communications activities: "How will your brand strategy look in five years?"
Making sure your brand stays relevant to consumers is a top priority. But consumer trends and preferences are changing faster and more frequently than ever. It’s undoubtedly hard to know which ones to invest in to create a strong and long-lasting brand.
Indeed, preparing for the future is no easy feat with so many unknowns. However, social media monitoring can go a long way in helping you detect valuable, actionable insights that you can use to anticipate and leverage emerging trends. This will not only lead to an effective branding strategy that connects and resonates with consumers, but keeps you ahead of your competitors!
In November 2019, we partnered with Aboitiz Equity Ventures in Manila for our first ever User Club and Socialize in the Philippines. Attended by more than 100 of the country’s leading marketers, we talked about how consumer insights from social listening could help you build a future-proof brand strategy.
The session opened with a welcome address by Jojo Guingao, Senior Vice President & Chief Digital Officer, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, who spoke about the importance of having a community of social intelligence specialists to share ideas and inspirations with. Here are some of the highlights from the day.
Gaining Consumer Insights for Your Social Strategy from Social Media Listening
Speaking about the importance of consumer insights, Digimind’s General Manager, APAC, Stephen Dale shared how the Voice of Customer has a profound impact on your customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. In fact, companies that actively engage in a Voice of Customer program, spend 25% less on customer retention than those who don’t.
But how do you go about breaking down big data from social media platforms into smart data that is digestible and actionable? It all comes down to:
- Setting clear objectives
- Matching relevant insights to each stage of the customer journey
Marketing and customer experience teams can make use of social media data to optimize brand messaging, customer service, and more at each stage of the purchase journey, to drive customer loyalty and engagement in real time.
Remember: a successful brand strategy does not just help you stay top of mind with consumers. It also positions your offerings as a way of fulfilling their needs and expectations. Gathering and analyzing customer insights from social networks, websites, and forums, can help you achieve that by getting inside the mind of your customer.
Source: Marketoonist.com
Leading Digital Transformation with Social Media Insights: The Aboitiz Way
For Aboitiz Equity Ventures, a leading conglomerate in The Philippines, the importance of digital transformation to future-proof their brand cannot be understated. With technology evolving at an exponential rate, organizations must keep up – or be left in the dust.
Jeffrey Cape, Digital Channels and Marketing Manager from Aboitiz shared how social insights from Digimind Social is paramount to guiding organizations toward fulfilling this vision.
Social Media Listening Best Practices for Understanding the Voice of Customer
Here are three best practices from Jeffrey:
1. A Two-Pronged Approach
Jeffrey stressed that “Social intelligence is not a tool you buy. It is a discipline enabled by the tool.” Therefore, your social media listening strategy should be constructed with a two-pronged approach – one that addresses both a physical and digital aspect!
2. Set Your Objectives
As marketers, we’re often obsessed about KPIs – and rightly so! Oftentimes, the nature of your business dictates the goals you should prioritize. It’s therefore important to identify the objectives you want to measure and corresponding metrics to measure those specific objectives.
3. Use Tools to Evaluate and Optimize
The great thing about social media is that a lot of it is measurable. After setting your objectives and metrics, the next step is to undergo regular reviews post-campaign, or even as they happen.
Nowadays, major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have their own built-in analytics tools for you to track specific metrics. However, these are not without their limitations. Data extraction and analysis have to be done manually, and not all the metrics you may need will be available.
This is where specialised tools become useful for tracking and benchmarking metrics better, and automating your data visualization so you can spend more time on strategizing and optimizing your digital marketing campaigns!
How Can You Embrace Social Insights Now?
It’s no secret that social media intelligence will play a huge role in helping companies digitize and future-proof their brand strategies. Here are some steps you can take to deploy social listening across all levels in your company:
- Management-Led: Key company leaders should shape and drive the initiative. It’s important for your executives to embrace digital tools and set an example to your people.
- Nurture a Hivemind: Break down silos to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing within teams.
- Optimize User Experiences: Provide sufficient training and support for users to learn about and embrace the benefits of new technology. It’s important to have champions across different departments for this.
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